A friend of mine is a correspondent for KCET, the Los Angeles PBS station. A few days ago, he told me that he had been assigned to cover the Michael Jackson memorial held yesterday at Staples Center and that he was not looking forward to it at all. Aside from the logistical nightmare of getting through the traffic jams and police barricades, he didn't get what all the fuss is about. "Sure, Jackson was a good entertainer," he said, "but was he really important enough for all this?" He also wondered why so many people can become so active over Jackson's death—showing up at the gates of Neverland Ranch and the Jackson family home, signing up for tickets to the memorial—but not over much more important issues such as health care.

<I>I purchased an SPL meter to level the speakers in my 5.1 surround system. I read an article in </I>Home Theater<I> magazine about how to use this device, but I'm still not sure how to do it. For example, I'm not sure where to put the dial&#151;do I start at 80 or 120?

Eliot Marin

D&M Holdings is the corporate umbrella under which both Denon and Marantz live, so it's no surprise that the flagship Denon DVD-A1UDCI (reviewed by Shane Buettner for Home Theater) and Marantz UD9004 universal disc players are both based on a common platform. So why is the Marantz $1500 more than the already very-expensive Denon?